According to a paper published in Science, models of how animal and plant distributions are affected by climate change may also explain aspects of human evolution.

Will climate change end up replacing Darwinian evolution as the factor that explains everything? Just listen to this:

Climate is believed to be the driving force behind most of these evolutionary processes, including geographical range change. It dictates which species are where at what time, driving their geographical spread or contraction.

Dr Stewart continued: “Ultimately, this model explains why Homo sapiens as a species are here and the archaic humans are not.”

Indeed. Of course climate change can explain much, but this sounds like an attempt at The Big Explanation.

These people seem to be, somewhat quixotically, striving to overtake the cultural dominance of Darwin’s crackpots. We’ll know they have succeeded if, instead of evolutionary psychology, we will be listening to climate change psychology pouring from social science and popular media, purporting to explain everything under the sun. Odds are against it, but – interesting attempt.

Note that the Neanderthals in the accompanying illustration are naked. So, it never occurred to them to wrap themselves in the skin of the animal they were skinning?

One Response to Could climate change replace Darwinism as The Big Explanation?

ID’s embrace of global warming skepticism is a disaster. We IDers desperately need to see light and admit that global warming is real, man-made and we need to do something about it. The evidence that the world is warming up is so patently obvious that we risk looking like crazy fools since we are so blinded that we are unable to see what’s obvious. It’s hard for people to take us seriously when we deny scientific evidence that is so clear. Darwin was wrong, global warming is real.